We’ve been missing a big part of game industry’s digital revolution

Enlarge / Data! Pew-pew! (credit: Aurich / Getty / Konami)

Last year, the Entertainment Software Association's annual "Essential Facts" report suggested that the US game industry generated $16.5 billion in "content" sales annually (excluding hardware and accessories). In this year's report, that number had grown to a whopping $24.5 billion, a nearly 50-percent increase in a span of 12 months.

No, video games didn't actually become half again as popular with Americans over the course of 2016. Instead, tracking firm NPD simply updated the way it counts the still-shadowy world of digital game sales. This "restatement" of the US game industry's true size helps highlight just how much the game industry at large has transitioned from a business based on physical goods to one dominated by digital downloads and online purchases.

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